Nudity, numpty and nudge

Just so much more Olympics PR to get through… and only one more day!

Shameless self-promotion Award: GB high-jumper Robbie Grabarz bares almost all in celebration of a bronze medal. Not doing anything to dampen the rumours of what goes on in the athletes’ village. However, at the other end of the spectrum, US rower Henrik Rummel denies getting, errrm, over-excited about his bronze.

Best and worst interview: John Inverdale’s emotional interview with GB silver medal winning rowers Mark Hunter and Zac Purchase must be one of the rawest pieces of TV from the Games. Meanwhile US swimmer Ryan Lochte is the only athlete with a YouTube compilation of his greatest interview misses – viewed by over two million people so far. Numpty.

Most overused phrase: Going mad. Commentators, forced to watch similar heats, have taken to commentating on the crowd. Spectators are constantly ‘going mad’, expected to ‘go mad’ at a certain point or respond to competitors ‘going mad’ upon victory. And of course the BBC hasn’t missed a moment to promote its own presenters ‘going mad’.

Most successful PR theory: All this ‘going mad’ is the culmination of carefully designed Olympic communications. As the Economist rightly points out, this has been the ‘Nudge’ Olympics. Expectations were managed, the torch relay warmed up the country and Britain has been nudged into enjoying every minute of the Games – including the queues. Nudge has even got us to change our travel habits.

PR of the Games: While it remains to be seen if Get Ahead of Games will see a permanent change in transport behaviour, brands such as Adidas will see a huge legacy impact of their PR and sponsorship activity, the Royal Mail has deepened the country’s love of the postal system and, with the right communications support, take up of sports will continue to grow.

But the greatest PR triumph of all has been how the Olympics has showcased people, Britain and London to the world. Here’s to the final weekend!

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/botosynthetic licensed under Creative Commons